Word.ws English Dictionary

cygnine

cygnine adjective: being of the genus Cygnus (swans), within subfamily Anserinae of the family Anatidae, though sometimes considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae.

Adjective

cygnine (comparative more cygnine, superlative most cygnine)

  1. Being of the genus Cygnus (swans), within subfamily Anserinae of the family Anatidae, though sometimes considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae.
    • The genus Choristopus, Eyton, apparently Anserine rather than Cygnine, is said to possess this character […]1869, Elliott Coues, On the Classification of Water Birds, Merrihew & Son, published 1870, page 26
  2. Of, concerning, relating to, resembling, or characteristic of swans.
    • But, in the cutting of it, if thou dost shed / One drop of cygnine blood, thy clumsiness...1848, Edmund Saul Dixon, Ornamental and Domestic Poultry, page 20
    • On the whole, then, the bones of the pectoral arch in Dendrocygna — if we may judge from the two North American species of the genus — are more anatine than they are either anserine or cygnine.1915, Zoologische Jahrbücher: Abteilung für Systematik, Geographie und […] , volume 38, page 44

Noun

cygnine (uncountable)

  1. (dated) An alkaloid from plants of genus Gastrolobium, found in Australia, principally Western Australia, highly toxic to introduced animals.

Forms of cygnine

comparativemore cygnine
superlativemost cygnine

Origin of cygnine

From Latin cygnus (“swan”), with English -ine. The alkaloid was named in reference to the Swan River in Western Australia, where the toxic plants were discovered.

Questions about cygnine

What does cygnine mean?
Cygnine means being of the genus Cygnus (swans), within subfamily Anserinae of the family Anatidae, though sometimes considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae.
What part of speech is cygnine?
Cygnine can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near cygnine in the dictionary

  1. cygnet
  2. cygnets
  3. cygnicide
  4. Cygnid
  5. Cygnids
  6. cygnine
  7. Cygnus
  8. Cygnus X-1
  9. Cygwin
  10. cyhalothrin
  11. cyheptamide

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cygnine (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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